Definition of Dialect

1.n. Means or mode of expressing thoughts; language; tongue; form of speech.

Definition of Dialect

1. Noun. (linguistics) A variety of a language (specifically, often a spoken variety) that is characteristic of a particular area, community or group, often with relatively minor differences in vocabulary, style, spelling and pronunciation. ¹

2. Noun. A dialect of a language perceived as substandard and wrong. ¹

¹ Source: wiktionary.com

Definition of Dialect

1. a regional variety of a language [n -S]

Medical Definition of Dialect

1.
1. Means or mode of expressing thoughts; language; tongue; form of speech. "This book is writ in such a dialect As may the minds of listless men affect. Bunyan. The universal dialect of the world." (South)
2. The form of speech of a limited region or people, as distinguished from ether forms nearly related to it; a variety or subdivision of a language; speech characterised by local peculiarities or specific circumstances; as, the Ionic and Attic were dialects of Greece; the Yorkshire dialect; the dialect of the learned. "In the midst of this Babel of dialects there suddenly appeared a standard English language." (Earle) "[Charles V] could address his subjects from every quarter in their native dialect." (Prescott)
Synonym: Language, idiom, tongue, speech, phraseology. See Language, and Idiom.
Origin: F. Dialecte, L. Dialectus, fr. Gr, fr. To converse, discourse. See Dialogue.
Source: Websters Dictionary
(01 Mar 1998)

Dialect Pictures

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Literary usage of Dialect

Below you will find example usage of this term as found in modern and/or classical literature:

1.The Encyclopaedia Britannica: A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and General by Thomas Spencer Baynes (1888)"The origin of tha -en plural in the midland dialect, unknown to Old English, has
been a matter of conjecture ; most probably it is an instance ol ..."

2.The Encyclopædia Britannica: A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, Literature and by Hugh Chisholm (1910)"From the whole of the glossaries of the dialect Society, and from all the ...
To this he has added an English dialect Grammar, dealing very fully with the ..."

3.The Sounds and Inflections of the Greek Dialects: Ionic by Herbert Weir Smyth (1894)"Anakreon is the chief native source of information concerning the dialect in
melic poetry. Simonides of Keos and the melic poets not of Ionic ..."

4.Encyclopaedia Britannica: A Standard Work of Reference in Art, Literature (1907)"The writers of each district wrote in the dialect familiar to them ; and between
extreme Sonus the difference was so great as to amount to unintelli- ..."

5.The Vision of William Concerning Piers the Plowman: In Three Parallel Texts by William Langland (1886)"dialect OF THE POEM. There can be little doubt that the true dialect of the author
is best represented by MSS. of the B-text, and that this dialect was ..."

6.Bulletin of the New York Public Library by New York Public Library (1909)"To which is appended an outline of the system adopted for Romanizing the dialect
of Amoy, by CW Bradley. (Am. Oriental Soc. Jour. New York, 1854. 8°. v. ..."

7.The Quarterly Review by John Gibson Lockhart, George Walter Prothero, William Gifford, Sir John Taylor Coleridge, Whitwell Elwin, William Macpherson, Baron Rowland Edmund Prothero Ernle, Sir William Smith (1907)"The English dialect Dictionary, Edited by Prof. Joseph Wright. Six vols. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1896- 1905. IT is impossible to turn over even only a few ..."